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<\/a><\/p>\nA new generation<\/a> of young Black leaders have ignited a movement. They have awakened the nation and the world<\/a> to the longstanding, daily brutality of state violence against Black lives. There have been daily protests against police brutality in U.S. cities\u00a0for over four months now, disrupting business as usual, shutting down intersections, bridges, tunnels, transit stations, and highways with clear demands<\/a> for justice and accountability. And they won’t stop soon.<\/p>\n Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and Patrisse Cullors are experienced\u00a0organizers who created Black Lives Matter<\/a> as an ideological\u00a0and political container not only for the demands to end the routine extrajudicial killings of Black people, but to end the devaluation of Black life in all its forms. As stated simply in this must-read essay<\/a>, Black Lives Matter is \u201ca tactic to (re)build the Black liberation movement.\u201d<\/p>\n That tactic is realigning the national conversation about race to focus on America’s\u00a0centuries-long, perpetual practice of anti-Blackness, from chattel slavery to Black Codes to\u00a0redlining; from slave patrols to Broken Windows policing to Stand Your Ground laws; from convict leasing to today\u2019s mass incarceration, gentrification, gender violence, voter disenfranchisement, and school-to-prison pipeline.<\/p>\n It demands\u00a0that we\u00a0address the underlying historical and structural forces that lead to\u00a0the loss\u00a0of so many Black lives, in a nation that has allegedly left racism behind: Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, Rekia Boyd, James Byrd Jr., Aiyana Jones, Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride,\u00a0Yazmin Shancez, Tiffany Edwards, Jordan Davis, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, John Crawford, Akai Gurley… The list is excruciating.\u00a0Every 28<\/a> hours. 21<\/a> times more likely.<\/p>\n We can’t breathe.<\/p>\n Like so many others who have taken to the streets, shown up and spoken out in solidarity, we at ChangeLab are grateful for the fertile political space that Black Lives Matter has created. As Vijay Prashad reminds<\/a> us, Black Lives Matter \u201cis more than a hashtag. It is a first principle. It contradicts the Crime Bills, the Welfare Reforms, the Wars on Drugs and Terror. It suggests that Life is more important than the confidence of capital markets.\u201d<\/p>\n Black Lives Matter, as a tactic and a first principle, is fueling a movement for all of us to get free.<\/p>\n This summer we offered\u00a0Model Minority Mutiny<\/a> as a meme to inspire Asian Americans to stand up, speak out, and take action against the anti-Black logic of model minority politics. We hoped it would spark more conversations about anti-Black racism in Asian American communities. We hoped it would help lead to concrete political commitments and strategies, to transform U.S. political, economic, and cultural systems to value humanity over capital accumulation and war. We hoped it inspire more\u00a0Asian Americans to dig deep and ask, “What must we do now?”<\/p>\n We are inspired by and indebted to the grassroots organizations and networks courageously organizing\u00a0on the ground\u00a0in Asian American communities, without which the work required by this moment\u00a0would not be possible: in particular,\u00a0Chinese Progressive Association<\/a>\/Seeding Change<\/a>, Southeast Freedom Network<\/a>, CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities<\/a>, DRUM – Desis Rising Up and Moving<\/a>, and many others.<\/p>\n Just as Black Lives Matter is a call to center all<\/em> Black lives, Model Minority Mutiny is a call\u00a0not only to those of us with class, skin-color, or gender privilege to examine our complicity in the system. It is an opening to acknowledge\u00a0the marginalization of those Asian Americans who are most vulnerable to state violence \u2013 refugees of war; those targeted by state surveillance and profiling; those trapped in low-wage jobs and the informal economy; those who are incarcerated and formerly incarcerated; those who are undocumented; those who are trans, disabled, queer, cis-women, dark-skinned, Sikh, or Muslim. It is an invitation\u00a0for Asian Americans to unite\u00a0across difference for the long-term work to dismantle the apparatuses of state violence.<\/p>\n We live in a time when rightwing ideas of race and nation have gained such popularity that a majority of whites believe that they are the primary targets of racism. Many Americans think we\u2019re \u201cpast race\u201d or \u201cpost-racial\u201d. The color line has divided how the\u00a0nation views\u00a0reality. And many of the racial justice radicals of past movements who could\u00a0have helped us navigate the pitfalls\u00a0of post-racialism\u00a0have been\u00a0locked in cages, assassinated, or forced into\u00a0exile. Ethnic studies has been decimated, or largely de-politicized and distanced from its intent to serve the people. All of this, along with\u00a0the model minority myth and demographic change, pulled\u00a0the Asian American movement off its course. Too many of us\u00a0became unfamiliar with\u00a0the original principles\u00a0of Asian American politics. We need new space to arm ourselves with the knowledge and tools to build authentic relationships as we also\u00a0strategically shift power.<\/p>\n Black Lives Matter has opened up that space.<\/p>\n This is an exciting time. This is an insurgent time. A\u00a0growing legion of Asian American voices<\/a>\u00a0are demanding change, not to lift\u00a0ourselves up at the expense of others, but to link arms with others to take up the long and unfinished project of Black liberation. Our own freedom and humanity depend\u00a0on this. More of us are screaming, \u201cBlack lives matter!\u201d “This Stops Today!” and “Shut it down!” as we also regroup to plot\u00a0the long, difficult and\u00a0necessary work of\u00a0growing this movement in our communities.<\/p>\n What does Model Minority Mutiny\u00a0mean in concrete terms? What political commitments does it require\u00a0of us? Asian American organizers\u00a0and young people\u00a0in\u00a0every region of the country are hungry\u00a0to answer these questions, to organize\u00a0their communities to stand on the insurgent side of the color line.<\/p>\n Tomorrow\u00a0there\u00a0is a national call<\/a> on Black & Asian solidarity, where hundreds of Asian Americans will start to answer\u00a0these questions. The response has been overwhelming, to the point that the call is full, but you can\u00a0listen to the recorded version afterward. And you can hold these conversations in your own organizations and communities. We are grateful to DRUM<\/a> in New York for offering several questions<\/a> to consider. Below is\u00a0a revised version of them. We invite you to share your\u00a0thoughts and insights, and what comes out of the conversations you’re having,\u00a0in the comments section below.<\/p>\n A new generation of young Black leaders have ignited a movement. They have awakened the nation and the world to the longstanding, daily brutality of state violence against Black lives. There have been daily protests against police brutality in U.S. cities\u00a0for over four months now, disrupting business as usual, shutting down intersections, bridges, tunnels, transit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8974,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1370],"class_list":["post-8954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/resize.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8954"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10481,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8954\/revisions\/10481"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8954"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n